You must read today’s xkcd: The Pace of Modern Life. That’s all, gotta go.
I just had to pluck out one example.
The managers of sensational newspapers…do not try to educate their readers and make them better, but tend to create perverted tastes and develop vicious tendencies. The owners of these papers seem to have but one purpose, and that is to increase their circulation.
They do it for the blog hits.
tl;dr
Bunch of words, some numbers — no pictures? Can someone give me the Cliff Notes?
(the above was intended ironically, for those with irony deficit disorder. But here is a more meta comment: http://freethoughtblogs.com/cuttlefish/2011/03/16/tldr/ )
Nice easter egg in the image title:
“Unfortunately, the notion of marriage which prevails … at the present time … regards the institution as simply a convenient arrangement or formal contract … This disregard of the sanctity of marriage and contempt for its restrictions is one of the most alarming tendencies of the present age.’ –John Harvey Kellogg, Ladies’ guide in health and disease (1883)”
This is glorious. I am sharing it like a mofo.
Gonna say something, maybe later. Gotta run.
As it has always been. I’m sure that the first cavemen that invented baskets were criticized by their elders for robbing the sublime act of gathering of its intrinsic relaxing pace. Kids these days, in such a hurry to store their nuts for the winter.
Cuttlefish, I expected that, too. Also, I was disappointed it spanned only 44 years, especially since the final quote references a century.
I should go hunt up studies on nostalgia. I’ll get to it one of these years.
Emu Sam,
Don’t bother. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
Louis
For people who think the ‘modern age’ and the decline of human peace and happiness began with the institution of agriculture and the city-state, this is just grist for the mill. Ah, how we pine for the stress-free days of the Noble Savage, living simply off the land in harmony with nature and in tune with spirituality! Since then it’s all been shit.
Some years BC, a Greek philosopher wrote that the youth of the time “drove their chariots too fast”, “listened to crazy, degenerate music”, were “disrespectful to their elders”, and were “harbingers of the destruction of society.” I was given that essay to read in 1st year philosophy.
We (humans) are always the same.
Brian @ # 2: … no pictures?
Whaddya want, a bunch of stick figures?
Now in the old days, you’d get a cartoon that somebody had actually drawn! Steve Canyon, Steve Roper, Mike Nomad, Mark Trail, Alley Oop – you know a real artist put devoted hours into depicting those manly biceps and broad pectorals, creating images a man could enjoy all day, from the detailed backgrounds to the inspirational figures of true American heroes we all know and love.
‘Scuse me, I need a little private time now…
As it was, so it will be. There is nothing new under the Sun. All is emptiness and pursuit of wind.
tl;dr :)
Yep, everything is going to hell in a hand basket, and precipitously. But not precipitously enough to shut us up about it, nor to keep us from saying the same dumb shit decade after decade.
An elegant silence used to reign over campfire and hunting grounds, (well, except for that dying rabbit sound Ug made every time he was wounded), but it all changed when we learned to talk.
We should ban all those with working vocal chords from the campfire. Use ’em as bait, maybe.
There are those who say that even the trees were a bad move, and that we never should have left the ocean.
Oh tempora, oh mores.
“Some years BC, a Greek philosopher wrote that the youth of the time “drove their chariots too fast”, “listened to crazy, degenerate music”, were “disrespectful to their elders”, and were “harbingers of the destruction of society.” I was given that essay to read in 1st year philosophy. ”
He was right, you don’t see a Greek society nowadays with people riding chariots now do you?
“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
Ninepence for a letter pre-1873? It was a penny in 1840, and still only threepence or fourpence by the 1960s.
The ancient Romans complained about how those ignorant, dirty, savage immigrants were destroying their city by taking it over.
/reading this right now
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” –Socrates (Attributed, of course)
–
“Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these” — Ovid
These things weren’t even new a century ago.
obligatory Monty Python
Lynna:
And have you noticed that hand baskets are nowhere near as good as they used to be?
It’s entertaining to see that everyone believes that the people quoted were wrong.
I do not know why this thread reminded me of this one of my favorite dramatic speeches but it did
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS5gU3-0giE
uncle frogy
Ye Olde Blacksmith@23, Off topic, but:
I didn’t expect that!
Even rose tinted spectacles are not manufactured to the high standards of the past these days.
or really expensive
Every generation bemoans the degenerative qualities of their successors. Some things never change.
I think mond may have won the thread…